False teaching-research distinction
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| Pratap Bhanu Mehta |
One of the more invidious distinctions that has harmed higher education in India is the distinction between teaching and research. At a superficial level these are distinct activities of course and may even require different skills. Certainly good teaching requires effective communication skills and the ability to respond to an audience in a way not required of a competent researcher. But the distinction misleadingly implies that there is something formulaic about teaching that can be detached from research orientation. It is difficult to imagine what sound undergraduate education is about if not inculcating an ability to research, not in a strict professional sense, but as an orientation to the world.
The goal of undergraduate education should be to encourage inquiring minds. This is a disposition to relentlessly ask new and difficult questions, to rigorously follow the logic of an argument, to weigh evidence, and to generate knowledge rather than passively receive it. What else is research about?
The false distinction between teaching and research has three invidious consequences. First, in our pedagogic practices. We usually have dull teachers because they themselves have no idea what is research. That is to say, they cannot teach how to frame questions, formulate hypotheses and search for evidence. Therefore they cannot communicate the excitement of knowledge because they have no sense of what it is to make a discovery. Although there are exceptions, teachers who do not exert their own research skills are unlikely to be able to produce searching minds. They are also less predisposed towards being questioned or having their assumptions unsettled.
The second invidious consequence is that we have institutionally isolated undergraduates from top-notch researchers and left them at the mercy of teachers who do not have the time or inclination to pursue research. The world’s most respected universities like Harvard, Princeton, Yale will compromise on many things. But they will very rarely exempt their top professors from undergraduate lectures. In a sense, undergraduate teaching is more important than graduate teaching because students are of an age when an inquiring orientation needs to be nurtured. Second, the creation of a vigorous culture of ideas and institutionalisation of cumulative research depends upon access to large numbers of students. The great mathematician Hardy once remarked that he became a better mathematician because of his students. Most top-notch researchers will acknowledge as much. But this is possible only in teaching structures where professors are free to do what they do best and impart it to their students, without being bound by rigid conventions of what should be taught.
India needs institutions of all kinds. But it is a mistake to divorce research institutes from universities. Yet much of our investment in higher education has implicitly or explicitly located research outside universities. The consequence is that some of our best academic talent is not teaching, making it difficult to institutionalise experiences which enable students to develop research capability.
Finally, from the point of view of the job market too, this distinction is invidious. When top Wall Street firms recruit philosophy graduates from Harvard, they are not looking at the information these students can reproduce in exams; they are looking for possession of generalisable skills. Does the student have initiative? Can she think rigorously? Can they express themselves? Do they know how to ask searching questions? When they don’t know the answer, do they have the imagination to figure out where they can find answers? Notice these are all attributes of a good researcher. So many of our graduates are unemployable because they lack the generalisable skills of a competent researcher.
In the 21st century, the economy is dependent upon the production of knowledge across the board. And part of what makes knowledge economically useful is the fact that is innovative. Everything from receiving patents, to winning of prizes, from earnings from royalties to publication in top flight journals, depends upon the ability to come up with something new. That is exactly what research demands of us. But good research cannot be sustained by the imagination and excellence of a few. The quality of the median student or teacher must be such that they are receptive to research, understand its importance and support it in every way they can.
It is also disquieting that the lynchpin of any system of higher education — undergraduate education — is receiving very little attention. The University Grants Commission’s response to the crisis of undergraduate education, where 70 percent of our students are, is simply an admission of failure. It allows undergraduates to pursue vocational courses simultaneously, as if NIIT could be a substitute for a robust undergraduate education. Again, the distinction between vocational and regular education is also misplaced, as the quality of vocational education cannot be improved without raising the quality of education. Of course vocational learning and general undergraduate education are different in terms of their objectives. But it is overstating the case to argue that both don’t require some similar attributes.
Our system of higher education is prisoner to many false distinctions. The sooner we dispel the idea that qualitative research institutions can be sustained without teaching, the better. Taking advantage of a knowledge economy requires producers of knowledge, not mere consumers. And production of knowledge is possible at all levels. It is what we call research. Our fear of research is ultimately fear of excellence and distinction. God forbid we should want these qualities in our institutions!
(Pratap Bhanu Mehta is president of the Center for Policy Research, Delhi)